The UCA Bears baseball team (14-17, ASUN 6-6) got burned by the Liberty Flames (14-17, ASUN 16-16) in a 2-1 series loss. The Bears won the final game 9-3 against Liberty.
The teams ran neck-and-neck for the entirety of the first game, with the Bears losing by just two hits.
The game started with the Bears leading 2-0, including a two-run double down the right field that led sophomore outfielder Kolby Johnson and junior infielder Mason King to the top of the first.
The Flames then started to climb back up with sophomore left-handed pitcher Garrett Horn and junior reliever Trey Carter who earned a combined 14 strikeouts for Liberty.
The Bears tried to combat this with junior pitcher Jesse Barker and junior reliever Mason Griffin having five strikeouts each, however, this wasn’t enough.
The Flames soon closed the gap with single runs in the first and second innings. The Flames took the lead for the rest of the game from a two-run sixth and eventually won 4-2.
The second game was not fruitful for the Bears, with them not able to pick up a second run until the seventh inning.
As the game started, the gap between the two teams only got larger as the Flames ran it up with a lead of 11-1 at the end of the sixth inning.
At the start of the seventh inning, the Bears tried to climb back with a sacrifice fly from A.J. Mendolia, scoring three more runs in the ninth inning.
Even with the three Liberty errors, the Bears lost with a final score of 11-6.
The final game started strong for Liberty with UCA trailing behind 3-0 after just three innings.
With UCA’s losing streak against Liberty, the Bears turned up the heat later into the game by scoring nine runs from the fifth to seventh innings.
While the Bears were slowly climbing back up, the Flames started struggling with numerous miscues and ended up finishing the game with six errors, three of which were from sophomore third baseman Cam Foster.
As the game continued, UCA started to even out the score to 3-3 with sophomore Reid Bowman’s single bringing senior pitcher Trey Harris to tie the score.
After the gap between teams was closed, it was only a small amount of time until the Bears started to obliterate the Flames by taking advantage of several errors made by the Flames.
The final game against Liberty ended with a win for the Bears with a final score of 9-3.
The Bears will head back out on the road for an ASUN series against North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida at 5:05 p.m. on April 14.